


Between the Stripes

by daphnerunning



Series: What is Wrought Between Us [16]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Gen, Post-Nirnaeth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-13
Updated: 2020-12-13
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:07:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 5,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28050627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daphnerunning/pseuds/daphnerunning
Summary: Maedhros wakes in the Blue Mountains, and knows something is wrong.Something is missing.And will always be so.
Series: What is Wrought Between Us [16]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2019358
Comments: 25
Kudos: 68





	1. Chapter 1

_The Blue Mountains, 472 F.A._

"Gag him."

"He'll choke. He isn't in his right mind."

"Then smother him, and end it. Better that than they hear us. Then we'll all die."

"Moryo..."

"...I didn't mean it. You know that."

"Try the drink again."

A sigh. Then there was a dark lantern by his face, mostly covered, the light slowly registering in his eyes. "Russandol? Can you hear me?"

His heart was loud. Something was wrong. Hesitantly, he nodded, though words still felt complicated and strange, and he could not decide how to form them.

He heard another sigh, this one of more relief. "Good. Can you drink for me?"

He did not want to drink. Red-gold hair flickered above him. Mairon would force him if he did not, and the orc-draughts were vile--

No, no, this was Celegorm, his brother, and the candle reflecting off of his fair hair. Time snapped a little further together. Something was still wrong. Something was missing. Something that was once a part of him was gone, cloaked in shadow.

"Russandol. Drink."

The wine was disgusting. It was one of Celegorm's special brews, the ones that he'd taken to keeping for the bad nights, in the cellars of Himring--

Himring.

Overthrown.

Overrun.

Broken.

He'd failed.

The Union, failed.

Then everything clicked, and he knew himself. He sat up suddenly, so fast they instinctively reached for him, but he paid no heed. "What is the news? What has happened? Where--"

"Hold still," Celegorm growled, and grabbed him by the shoulder, wrestling him back down. "You're _injured_ , Nelyo. Badly."

Slowly, the shadows in the room began to resolve in his vision, which was never very good in low light on the left side. Celegorm was stripped to the waist, with ragged bandages about his middle and left arm. They appeared to be in a cottage--in a forest, if he judged the sounds right from outside. He saw Curufin, standing by the door, with another bloody rag wrapped about his head, and a crutch under one shoulder. He was grim-faced and pale, but his hands were steady on the sword in his hand. At the small single window, he saw Amrod, keeping close vigil with his bow, though his right leg was bound up and splinted. At Amrod's feet lay another shape--Amras, by the hair--whose hands were bandaged, and he made little noises of pain whenever he exhaled. Caranthir bent over Maglor, who looked like a shadow covered in blood, and shook when he tried to move away.

He lay in the cottage's only bed, a ramshackle, tiny thing that must have been made for Men or Dwarves. His brothers had stricken the foot of the bed off, and his legs were propped up on a chair. Looking down, he saw blood, black in the darkness, seeping from some bandaged wound that ran from the right of his chest down to his left hip, as if he'd been nearly cloven in two.

And he had, hadn't he?

For a moment, that made sense. His guts had come out, clearly. He had lost something dear to him in the battle, he knew, but all of his brothers were here. Something was missing. Something had been removed from him. The Men--Uldor, he had come so close, close enough that Maedhros had had to turn away from the great golden worm, and the fire had washed over his men in brilliant hues. Amras had screamed, and retreated, and Maedhros had called to form up, yes, using his Battle Voice that all abroad seemed to hear, the one that was just a pale imitation of his father's war cry, and then Uldor--

No, Maglor had killed Uldor before he could reach Maedhros, it had been someone else who had--

The battle came back in bits and flashes. Uldor, a wicked leer on his face, advancing on the sons of Bór, his fine men, who had proven true, and had died. The wargs, that he had refused to break for, who had nonetheless slaughtered so many of his soldiers, his long-planned Union. The balrogs, killers of his father, who had descended upon them, and then turned West, to--

He tried to sit up again, needing to move, anything but holding still and listening to his own mind, but Celegorm held him down. "Stop it, Russo," he said, and his voice was hard. "It's over."

"But--"

"You almost got us killed with your screaming. If you're going to go to pieces, drink, and go to sleep."

Something was missing.

Something was wrong.

"Drink," Malgor said, and he sounded as if he were nearly dead himself. "I'll sing, if you drink. I'll sing you to sleep."

"You'll do it quietly," Curufin muttered. "The orcs are still searching for us. I got our people hidden as well as I could, but the land is overrun, even here."

"It doesn't matter." That was Amrod, whose gaze did not waver. "We cannot travel any farther. If they find us, we will fight, and they will die."

Maedhros had a feeling he did not want to know what was missing from him. What had been taken this time? Was it his organs? He thought it might be. He could see his legs, his left hand. He couldn't feel his heart beating. Perhaps it was that.

"Is the pain too great?" Celegorm asked, frowning.

Maedhros shook his head, and took the cup. "I don't even feel it," he said honestly, and drank, until the cup was empty. Maglor sang, quiet as he could, and he slipped down into dreams of darkness, and loss.

~

When next he awoke, it was daylight. His wound had opened in the night, and lack of blood made him dizzy, so much so that he couldn't raise his head.

"We can't travel like this," Celegorm muttered.

"We couldn't go anywhere anyway," Amrod replied. "The enemy is too many, and we are too few, and have only two horses."

"There are settlements in the Blue Mountains we can reach. I'll ride to them, and find us horses and supplies."

"Turko," Caranthir said, sounding exhausted, as if he'd been awake all night in pain. "We can bide for a few days. Let the orcs think they've found everything, and run back to their master."

"And if Russandol's screaming brings them onto us?"

"I won't scream," Maedhros said. None of them looked convinced, but he was tired, and did not want to think yet. "Before I sleep, you must gag me."

"You strike in your sleep, too."

"Then tie me to the bed." It was hardly the first time. Not whenever he was alone, when he didn't have--

No, he could not think yet, there was something very dangerous in his mind, waiting to pull him into the darkness. He closed his eyes, and said quietly, "Maglor knows how."

~

On the third day after the battle, Maedhros woke. His mind could not protect him any longer.

He knew.


	2. Chapter 2

_Mount Dolmed, 473 F.A._

Maedhros wondered when it would truly hit him that Fingon was dead.

He was, he knew. He'd known since he'd awakened, and known for certain on the third day. A sense of terrible calm had come over him, and some great fire, that had burned in him as long as he had been alive, had gone out.

This was no battle he could fight by raging and striking. This was no bitter pain he could defeat by enduring. This was simply...absence. Not cold instead of warmth: nothing, instead of warmth.

Nothing.

 _So that is the Everlasting Void_ , he thought, and understood for the first time what he had sworn, at his father's side in Tirion upon Túna, in another land, in another life.

He stopped drinking. To stop from screaming in his sleep, he stopped sleeping, and stared at the ceiling with his jaw tightly shut until morning came again.

His wound grew worse. Maglor recovered from his wound-fever, and sang, and the sons of Fëanor grew healthy once more, after months of patient song. Maglor was no Finrod, and his songs held more of emotion than of magic, but Finrod was dead, and no one else would come to sing their wounds closed. Maedhros would never hear Fingon's voice sing of summer again, his head in that familiar lap.

They retreated, when they could move, to Mount Dolmed, and gathered what followers they still had about them. The shining eight-pointed star on the red field flew again.

It didn't matter.

His brothers watched him, wary. Maedhros couldn't blame them. He'd nearly killed them in torment before, after Angband, and thinking of that as "anguish" felt almost comical now. Wounds of the body, anguish? If he was not careful, he would laugh, and did not think he would be able to stop.

The people needed him to fight. He dragged himself out of bed, ignored his wound, and killed orcs. He was good at killing. There had been no place for a creature of blood and death and fire in the blessed realm of Aman. Destruction lived in his soul.

He had Caranthir cut his hair, short to the nape of his neck, and kept it short from then on. Maglor asked, but Maedhros only shrugged. "I can't braid it, anyway."

Six months after the battle, they had news, a bundle of letters and missives from their long-sundered kin, now retreated to Doriath, Gondolin, and the Falas. There was a letter from Ereinion. Maedhros read it, folded it, then asked very neutrally, "Will someone tell me how he died?"

Maglor and Curufin shared a long glance. Celegorm stared down at his hands. The Ambarussa turned away.

Caranthir came to the table, and plucked up one of the letters addressed to him. "Balrogs," he said shortly. "Gothmog. Like Father. It was a valiant death, and quick. So my people say."

Silence reigned in the small fortress they'd shaped for their own. Maedhros heard his heart thudding dully against his ribcage, stupidly refusing to stop. In front of the gates of Angband, within sight of the Thangorodrim. "Thank you," he said, and burned the letter.

~

After a time of years, they drifted apart. They had large personalities, didn't even like each other most days, and the Oath was sour within them.

Celegorm stayed, long past the time Maedhros considered himself healed, or healed enough to be getting on with. He was even pleasant company, speaking when Maedhros wanted to fill the silence, recalling songs of Men so lewd and boisterous even Maglor refused to learn them, quietly fletching arrows when Maedhros needed to be silent.

"Why?" Maedhros asked, once. "Why stay with me? You have your followers. Surely you want to rebuild what we have lost."

Celegorm looked out the fortress window to the West, and his eyes were hard. "Perhaps I don't want to be alone, in thinking my dead lover's stupid brother will be a bad High King."

Later, by the hearth, Maedhros poured them both some of his brother's terrible, potent wine. "I didn't know. That you two..."

Celegorm made a dark little sound. "Don't be stupid, Russo." He took a long drink, and gave what on a different elf might have been called a smile. "You can't marry your cousin, after all."


	3. Chapter 3

_Doriath, 506 S.A._

Perhaps it was gratitude for that time, of brotherhood and compassion, that swayed him to listen, when he knew Celegorm was wrong.

"It's ours by right, and we must have it either way. What need Dior, son of Beren One-hand and Lúthien Tinúviel, of what our father wrought? What right have they to the Nauglamír? If they will not give it to us in friendship and in fellowship, why should we not take it? Our force is rebuilt, and in Doriath, no Melian nor Thingol now await to ensnare such as we. How long shall Thingol's decrees plague us, even after the foul old bastard was slain by his own pride and cruelty? He's forbidden us the land we deserve, banished us to high cold mountains, refused to aid us, even forbidden us our very _language_. Now that he is dead--aye, and Lúthien, and well I know of my deeds in that matter, do not feel the need to educate me--we _must_ claim what is ours. How shall any lay claim to the works of our father, when we have bled and died and fought harder than any others in this country? We, who were accounted the highest of the mighty, driven into the mountains and left to starve, for our crime of wanting what is our own! I _will_ go to Menegroth, and I will take the Nauglamír, yea, and strike out the necklace of the Dwarves just as I would strike off the crown of Morgoth. If you are true brothers, and true sons of Fëanor, you will be with me!"

Curufin did not want to go to Doriath. Maglor did not want to be looked upon as a robber, a Kinslayer. Amrod and Amras were loathe to move against a realm that had so recently betrayed them. Caranthir wanted to stay with his people, with what he had rebuilt.

Maedhros just felt empty.

He wished it would hurt. He was no stranger to pain. Pain was easy. This felt more like the times Mairon would make him wait for the stroke, and he never knew what it would be next, where it would fall, or how hard it would split him open. That was the true beauty of scourging, Mairon had told him, once. Not the stripes themselves, but the moments between the stripes, when the victim could not tell whether the pain was over, or had yet to truly begin.

~

For hours, Maedhros searched the woods for the twins Eluréd and Elurín, those lovely children of Dior and Nimloth. In vain, of course. Nothing he did would be anything else. All he touched turned to ash.

He returned to the site of the slaughter, and stared down at the bodies of his brothers. "Get up," he told Celegorm, and kicked him in the stomach.

He thought for a moment Celegorm gasped, but it was Maglor, behind him. "Russo, don't. He's--"

"No, he's not," Maedhros spat, and kicked Celegorm again, harder. His head lolled back at the impact, exposing a throat cut clear through the bone of his spine, by the sword of Dior of Nimloth, Lúthien's son. "Get up!" he snarled. "Up, you bastard! This was your idea! The Silmaril escaped with Dior's daughter! Your cruel servants drove off those boys to die in the wood! You're the best tracker and hunter we have, so _get up_!"

Amrod grabbed his left arm, Amras his right. They were both dry-eyed, but covered in gore, and there was a strange hollowness in Amrod's face. "He's dead, Nelyo," said one of them.

That didn't make sense. He felt the fire in him again after years of cold embers, and stared around, seeing Caranthir, who had not wanted to abandon his people, slumped against a wall with a spear through his chest. Curufin, who had shouted to his son that all would be mended between them upon his return, was in pieces, his arm and shoulder lying apart from his head, apart from his legs, apart from his torso.

But Maedhros had been hewn by Morgoth's black mace Grond, that had smote High King Fingolfin down. He had heard his skull crack under the blows, had been poisoned, stabbed, branded, and left to starve for decades.

He stared down at the bodies of his brothers--just the _hröa_. The _fëa_ was gone. Gone, and could rest, or gone, to be tormented by the Oath forever with no hope of fulfilling it.

The Oath was all he had.

Celegorm's eyes were wide and staring. Maedhros thought it might have been surprise, that he was mortal. Maedhros was certainly surprised.

 _Are you in the Halls, brother?_ he thought, staring into that sightless face. _Or are you in the void?_

If the Halls, that was nothing. He could find Fingon again, in the Halls or later. Centuries did not matter. But if he died with his Oath unfulfilled, where then would he go?

Maedhros turned, about to tell his brothers they must go, and chase down the survivors, to rip the Silmaril from them and kill the lot, women and children and all.

And then Maglor sagged against him, weeping into his chest.

Suddenly they were young again. He was small, and young, and whole, and Kanafinwë, the little songbird, was crying. _I heard Ammë and Atya fighting,_ he'd cried, wrapping his arms around Maitimo's neck.

And Maitimo had soothed him, and taken him up to the great palace roof, for all of Tirion was as one play-place for two vibrant, clever, athletic princes, child-lords of the House of Finwë, who were both determined and charming, and whom no one could waylay. And they had sat upon the roof, watching the light change from gold to silver. He'd made up little nonsense stories, tickled Káno's feet, taught him to curse, anything that would make him laugh and forget his sadness. He had always felt the sorrow of the sea, while Maitimo had always felt the heat of the flames.

"Hush, now," he murmured, and reached up to brush long dark hair away from that familiar face with his right hand, startling himself to find it gone. "Káno. It's all right."

"Why didn't they just give it to us?" his brother asked, desolate, five hundred years after he'd asked the same of the swan ships of the Teleri. Maedhros doubted there would be another Nolodantë now. If there was, who would listen to it, sung by the villain of the tale?

"It doesn't matter. It's over."

And it was. It would be. It had to be.

Maedhros set his jaw, and firmed his spine. "Bring the bodies," he ordered his soldiers. "The Sons of Fëanor will not be left among those who would curse them. If your hearts misgive you, be assured that mine does, as well. We will not make this mistake again."

There was doubt, sorrow, and sickness on many faces. But at his words, his followers found their resolve. They lay the bodies to rest, their own and those of Doriath, though not together.

Then, empty-handed, they strode out into the gentle twilight of what had been the Girdle of Melian, and searched for a new home.


	4. Chapter 4

_The Wilds, 512 S.A._

Fifteen years.

It took the Oath fifteen years to drive him mad.

"Perhaps if we stick together," he'd suggested, when they all decided they did not want to seek the Silmaril in Sirion, "it will not be so bad."

They'd fought, constantly. Teams had been drawn. Bitter feuds had begun between the Ambarussa, for they would never be split, and Maedhros and Maglor. The Oath sickened and twisted everything. When Maglor sang, Amras would snap, and then Maedhros would strike him, and then Amrod would break something, and Maglor would change his song to something mocking, strange, that called shadows out of the walls.

Gondolin fell. Turgon in his high tower came down to the earth of Arda at last. Maedhros heard, and was glad. At least Fingon would have his brother, to join his sister and father in the Halls, until the Valar were merciful and released them.

But Maedhros had heard the Doom of Mandos. No Noldor who had taken that Flight would be released soon, or without long strife and pain in the dark Halls. Fingon didn't deserve that.

"Who will be King now?" Maglor asked, when the news came through to the valley where they made their home, with such followers as they had left.

"He is called Gil-Galad, son of our cousin-son Orodreth," Amrod answered.

"Then he will be faithless to our cause," Amras said. "For Orodreth refused the Union and sent no troops from Nargothrond, and perhaps if he had not, King Fingon would be alive."

Maedhros felt his chest close like a vice. He looked up, pained, and Amras just shrugged. He no longer cared to watch his words.

"Perhaps we should abide apart for a while," Maglor suggested, looking weary.

The twins went to the forest, and Maedhros knew not where else. Maglor stayed close, though not in the same house, and for a few years, he could lock himself in a dark room with no furniture whenever the shadow came on him, and could scream and hit the walls to his heart's content.

On those nights, he tried to cry for Fingon. The shadow of Utûthost would not let him, curled around him, whispering that he had never deserved the peace and happiness of those years, that Fingon was better off free of him even in death, that he was the reason, he was the reason, he was the reason Fingon had come to Middle-Earth, had ended in fire and violence instead of living forever in gentle bliss.

When the nights were over, he sought his brother, and wordlessly offered his hand, his arm, and his head to be bandaged and soothed. Sometimes hearing the bones break made him feel better, just for a moment.

~

Maedhros expected a summons from King Gil-Galad. For years, he waited for it, to be called in to account for the massacre at Doriath. What would Ereinion see, looking at him now? Would he see his father's husband, the one who had taught him to track orcs through bare rock mountains, who had given him his first full-sized horse, who had taught him how to skin a deer, who had patiently told him the origins of his visible scars, who had given him blue and silver ribbons for his hair that he might be like his father?

Or would he see the ragged leader of a criminal band, a Kinslayer twice over, as far removed from the Lord of Himring as the Lord of Himring was from Nelyafinwë, Prince of the Noldor in Tirion?

It didn't matter. No summons ever came. The Sons of Fëanor would shape the fate of Arda no longer. There was freedom in irrelevance.

~

Grey shapes spoke to him in the darkness. None of them made any sense.

After hours, they made him drink water. They made him look at the light. They made him eat. He knew them, finally, for his brothers.

"How long were you locked in there?" Maglor asked, horrified.

Maedhros stared at him, hardly comprehending the question. "What year is it?" he croaked.

"This is stupid," Amras muttered. "Let's just go to Sirion and be done with it."

"We won't. We said we wouldn't."

Amras stared at him, with so much torment in his eyes that Maedhros moved by instinct, forcing his aching body to grip his brother's shoulder. "It's all right, Telvo," he said, because how could he deny them, even this? Even now, when there was nothing left? "Fine. We'll go."

He felt the easing of the Oath even as he said it, a relief so heady he felt his eyes roll back into his head for a moment. He watched it go through all of them, and Maglor let out a quiet shudder. Then he pulled himself together, forced a smile that did a poor job of hiding the approaching doom he felt. "Who has pen and paper? We will not make the same mistake as last time. We will write in friendship, not pride. We will extend our hand, and tell them we mean them no harm, but we _must_ take it, for our father and the Oath we swore."

"Would that it could be unmade," Amras said, and even if it was silent, Maedhros knew they all echoed the words in their hearts.

"Will they listen?" Maglor asked.

Maedhros wrote words of friendship, but he knew the answer already.


	5. Chapter 5

_Sirion, 538 F.A._

Maedhros remembered the look of Telvo's face, contorted in anguish by the Oath. It was absent of all pain now, slack in relief, laid next to Pityo.

Maedhros had never thought he could be jealous of the corpse of his brother.

He turned back to the cliff, where the lady Elwing had jumped, plummeting with the Silmaril clutched to her breast. Something ugly twisted in him, and he walked closer, feeling the wind whipping around him, and he knew that Ulmo's eye was upon him. _Do it_ , he urged silently, staring down the expanse of height to the shore far below, barren of his jewel, for Elwing had taken flight. _Do it, Lord Ulmo. Strike me down, for what I've done. I wish you would._

The Valar had never solved any of his problems before. They never answered questions properly. Fingon had prayed for his shot to strike true, and Manwë had denied him even that.

He turned away from the cliff. He moved slowly; it was a bad day for his knee, and having to behead three of his soldiers who had turned against him in confusion and regret had not made it easier. They had a few dozen left, maybe fewer, willing to follow them even to Sirion, and those few dozen were hard creatures of battle. Maedhros would have to account for his sins in leading them to this, someday, he knew.

His gaze scanned the plain. Corpses lay everywhere. Looters were drawing closer, Easterlings that kindled a sick hatred in his breast even now, and always orcs in the distance these days. In the harbor down at the shore, he saw Ereinion's ships--no, the ships of Gil-Galad, High King of the Noldor, come from Balor to the defense of his kinsmen at Sirion against the marauding outlaws, the Sons of Fëanor. Maedhros limped faster, face grim. "Maglor!" he called, a sudden fear seizing him. "Maglor! _Káno_!"

For a heart-stopping moment, he thought he'd missed something, some last remnant of Sirion with the skill left to fight, who had feathered his brother (his last brother, first brother, most dear brother) with arrows, and he was truly alone. The fear hit him at that, so powerfully he broke into a run, grinding knee or no grinding knee. " _Maglor!"_

"Here!"

Relief shot through him, and he ran faster, spotting the red cloak and dark hair at last. Maglor stood at the top of a path, peering through a gap in two enormous boulders. "Russandol, come here!"

"We have to go."

"You will come here." Maglor's voice was sharp as broken glass, and Maedhros went to him, having no will to fight.

He knew without asking, at the grief on Maglor's face, that he knew of the Ambarussa, and the futility of their quest yet again. What he did not expect to see was the children.

They were small, like children of the Eldar, and but had the wide-eyed stares of Mannish youths. They were fair indeed, with long dark hair and large grey eyes, and delicate leaf-shaped ears. Their clothes were well-made, for refugees, though of course Maedhros had _made_ them refugees out of princes, turned the scions of kings into beggars.

Perhaps if he had found Eluréd and Elurín long ago, they would have looked at him like that, when he told them he and his brothers had killed their parents.

"It's dangerous in there," Maglor said gently, and sat on a large flat rock, pulling out his small harp. He strummed a chord, and found a lighthearted ballad of Doriath, one of Daeron's songs.

"We don't have time for this," Maedhros muttered. "The King's ships are coming from the Isle. We must away."

Maglor plucked his harp, ignoring him. "I'm not leaving them here."

One of the children clutched a knife. He stood in front of his brother, and the spray of the foam from the small waterfall splashed him in the face, over and over. He ignored it. His stance was terrible. Maedhros had been taught to stand when he was far younger than that. Wooden toys lay on the ground between the boys, a game abandoned when they'd heard the fighting. Behind him in a shallow cave, his brother drew a threadbare cloak around his shoulders, obviously terrified, just as obviously trusting his brother to keep him safe. Maedhros well knew the look of a younger brother who trusted his protector.

And Maglor looked up at him, and looked old. Grief lined his face, and regret, and Maedhros could not have denied him anything.

So Maglor strummed his harp, and Maedhros climbed into the fissure, bad knee and all, one hand and all, the ships advancing and all. He lifted the brave, foam-spattered child in his left arm, his shy brother in the right, and carried them out. "I knew your great-grandfather," he informed them, finding his way unerringly across the wet rocks.

"Did you kill our Mama?"

"No." Maedhros paused, and added in fairness, "But I killed your grandparents, and your nurses, and your friends, and your uncles, long ago. And I drove your mother off the cliff."

The children did not cry. The brave one did try to stab him with the knife, sticking the tip into his shoulder, which made him grunt. "Stop that. Or put some power into it."

The child scowled at him. For just a heartbeat, he looked like Turgon, and Turgon looked like his father, and Fingolfin looked _so_ much like his firstborn.

"Maglor," he barked. "Disarm this child, he's stabbing me."

"He's no more than six, surely you can handle yourself."

"I have one hand and am holding two children," Maedhros growled. "Because of your mercy, so come at least do this much. We have to leave."

Maglor stood, put his harp back onto his back, and took the shy child from him, of course. Maedhros glared at him, and waved his stump, until he also plucked the knife out of the brave one's hand. "Let's drop them at the firth, and then leave."

"I'm not leaving them."

"Ereinion won't hurt them," Maedhros said, exasperated. "He won't ransom them, he won't kill their grandparents. We have to _leave_."

" _He_ won't." Maglor nodded around, at the lawlessness, the grief, and the humans starting to move around, picking and looting the bodies in red and blue alike. " _They_ might. Gil-Galad might not get here for hours. If they ride in fast, the children could be killed in the confusion, even if the scavengers don't get them."

Maedhros ground his teeth. The brave child kicked him, as if seeing what he could get away with. Maedhros ignored him. Movement rustled in the bushes, and without thinking, Maedhros shifted the child to his other arm, drew his sword, and stabbed an Easterling trying to sneak up on him cleanly through the throat. Blood sprayed, and he wrenched his sword free, kicking the outlaw back into the greenery.

"Fine. _You_ ," he said firmly, giving the child in his arms a shake, "must learn to fear me. Do as I say, or I will kill your little brother."

"Russan--"

"Do you want them giving away our locations?" Maedhros snapped, and hoisted the child one-armed onto his enormous horse, mounting swiftly after him. "Calling out whenever they see patrols in blue? Trust me. It's the only thing he'll respect." It's the only thing _he_ would have listened to.

"Fëanorians!" he bellowed, as Maglor raised the other child to his own horse, and mounted after, saying something quiet and reassuring in the boy's ear. Probably lying to the child, that he didn't have to fear the tall elf with one hand and a very long sword stained with blood.

Gathering their last ragged band of heartsick followers, they rode out, and the outlaws drew back from the looks on their faces in fear.


End file.
